As Vaughan turned the car into the filling station courtyard the scarlet light from the neon sign over the portico flared across these grainy photographs of appalling injuries: the breasts of teenage girls deformed by instrument binnacles, the partial mamoplasties...nipples sectioned by manufacturersí dashboard medallions; injuries to male and female genitalia caused by steering wheel shrouds, winshields during ejection...A succession of photographs of m
utilated penises, sectioned vulvas and crushed testi
cles passed through the flaring light as Vaughan stood by the girl filling-station attendant at the rear of the car, jocularly talking to her about her body. In several of the photographs the source of the wound was indicated by a detail of that portion of the car which had caused the injury: beside a casualty ward photograph of a bifurcated penis was an inset of a handbrake unit; above a close-up of a massively bruised vulva was a steering-wheel boss and its manufacturerís medallion. These unions of to
rn genitalia and sections of car body and instrument panel formed a series of disturbing modules, units in a new currency of pain and desire. (P. 134)